Expected start date: March 2023
This fully funded (fees + studentship) MSc research is a 14-months MSc
(https://www.ucd.ie/graduatestudies/) based at University College Dublin (Dublin, Ireland) in
which the appointed student will be working in a diverse team of scientists with post graduate
students, postdoctoral researchers and more senior principal investigators conducting research
on biodiversity conservation and management, climate change, ecological networks, and the
resistance and resilience of ecosystems to perturbations.
This MSc is funded through a Science Foundation of Ireland project entitled “Delivering food
security from grasslands by understanding the link between root microbial networks and
resilient agriculture”. The main goal of this SFI project is to understand how linkages
between the ecology below-ground and the ecology above-ground control grassland
productivity and resilience under the stresses of extreme drought and flood. The MSc project
will focus on plant communities (e.g. species richness and relative abundances) to combined
extreme drought and flood in grasslands and will involve field surveys, and field experiment
in summer 2023. The project will also involve statistical modelling with a focus on
connecting the plant community to microbial communities in soils and plant roots. The
project offers resources to attend one national/international conference.
The following selection criteria will be applied to applications.
Essential:
· Hold an undergraduate or taught Masters degree in an appropriate discipline (e.g.
ecology, zoology, botany, conservation, environmental sciences)
· Demonstrated aptitude and motivation for independent research in ecology, especially
field work and plant ecology
· Ability to organise, participate and undertake fieldwork
· Aptitude for plant species identification and use of species identification keys
Desirable:
· Community ecology analytical skills (e.g. multivariate statistics)
· Experience in grass taxonomy
· Experience in molecular ecology
The successful applicant will be invited to register for an MSc Research programme at
University College Dublin and will be supervised by two academics at UCD with the external
collaboration of one academic at Trinity College Dublin.
The studentship covers an annual PhD stipend €18,500 per annum and full tuition fees.
Applicants should submit a cover letter and cv to Dr Tancredi Caruso (tancredi.caruso@ucd.ie) by the 25 th of Jan 2023.